Deus in nobis: ética sin Transcendencia. Spinoza, Kant y Bonhoeffer

Abstract

This paper aims to point out the essential condition of autonomy in moral life. Where ‘autonomy’ is understood as the immanence of the governing principle of our actions, born of our knowledge and reflections. This article outlines this throughout three different and respectively far away in time thinkers as Spinoza, Kant and Bonhoeffer, who nevertheless have the common denominator of refusing those religious approaches which revoke men’s autonomy by means of raising an ethics based on Transcendence. There is a certain continuity between the three: Kant was inspired by Spinoza and Bonhoeffer by Kant. Furthermore, three of them are strong advocates of the human being autonomy and critic of every religion which tries for reducing it to a heteronomous being: only a religion that accepts the human being autonomy would be acceptable. Because of this ‘Deus in nobis’ expression, which states our moral reason is like God in us, is present somehow in the thinking of all of them.